STOKE-ON-TRENT (UK) POLICY BRIEF #4 • LIVEABILITY

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This policy brief showcases a successful initiative to improve urban liveability in a shrinking city through repurposing its historical heritage. It shows how old industrial buildings could be used to accommodate new creative arts entrepreneurs and host high profile cultural events. The brief focusses on Spode Works, a 10-acre and homewares production site located in Stoke-on-Trent – a medium-size polycentric industrial city in central England1, coping with population loss. Building on local knowledge and stakeholders’ experiences of using the Spode site after the factory’s closure in 2009, this brief demonstrates how a shrinking city can challenge a negative stereotype, raise its profile, and improve attractiveness by generating new creative arts and culture dynamics from within the effectively repurposed old industrial assets. The key lesson learnt is that to enhance liveability one should not drive it down to specific concerns like housing, jobs, or leisure. Urban liveability is about the dynamism and wider significance of a place. These qualities can be improved by a visionary local authority, enthusiastic civil society, and risk-taking private sector partners, all committed to urban regeneration and raising the city profile through the development of local creative capacity for impactful events and knowledge exchange.

INTRODUCTION Over the last two decades, Stoke-on-Trent actors have undertaken a series of initiatives aimed at making the city more attractive and liveable, including improvements in the social and private sector housing provision, tourist infrastructure developments, and civic-led creative arts projects. The local art and culture community and other stakeholders have acknowledged the city’s untapped potential for creativity and innovation. Building on the rich fabric of community life in the , several community-led projects2 have been very successful in renewing the creative arts dynamic of Stoke-on-Trent and strengthening the city’s importance within the broader national cultural landscape. These initiatives have ranged from grassroots festivals, neighbourhood lantern parades, and the restoration of green spaces and water canals, to creative consultations, civic pride celebrations, drama, performance, outdoor and indoor installation art.3 Amongst the most successful ideas that the local art and culture community in the Potteries has worked hard to make happen involves reusing and repurposing redundant industrial

1 Stoke-on-Trent (pop. 255,833) is a local authority created in 1910 through federation of six historical towns – The Potteries – including Tunstall, , Hanley, Stoke, Fenton, and Longton, with an area of 36 square miles [93 km2]. The municipality was granted city status in 1925 by King George V during a personal visit to emphasise its importance as the centre of the china and pottery industry. 2 E.g., see B Arts (2020) at https://www.b-arts.org.uk/core-work. 3 B Arts (2020). ‘Grassroots Festival’, https://www.b-arts.org.uk/grassroots-festival; ‘Creative Consultation’, https://www.b- arts.org.uk/creative-consultation; ‘Outdoor Art’, https://www.b-arts.org.uk/outdoor-art. This project is funded by the Joint Programming Initiative (JPI) Urban Europe jpi-urbaneurope.eu/project/3s-recipe 2 and retail spaces, buildings, and shop floors for the production, exhibition, and consumption of creative arts (Ault, 2019).

IMPROVING URBAN LIVEABILITY THROUGH CREATIVE ARTS AND CULTURE In 2009, the ’s historic Spode factory – the birthplace of fine bone china (c. 1770) – closed its gates for good. The bankruptcy of operating company and Spode left Award 2015, China Halls, Spode Works. Photo © Joel Fildes for British Ceramics Biennial 400 people out of work and a vast (10 acres / 4 ha) brownfield site, located next door to the Stoke-on-Trent City Council headquarters, to deal with. With the help of local design and creative arts professionals, and other stakeholders, including the local authority, an idea of a festival was launched to celebrate contemporary ceramics from across the world to be hosted in the heart of the world’s ceramics industry. The British Ceramics Biennial (BCB) first took place in 2009, set at Spode in the China Halls, and expanding to various established venues and non-traditional spaces across the city. It returned in 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, and was back in 2019 for the sixth time. Over the first decade of its existence, BCB has built up a programme of projects of artists’ residencies, fellowships, commissions, educational, and enterprise projects running year round. In general, the festival serves as a catalyst for regeneration in the region and a platform for innovation and excellence celebrating the best in current ceramic practices. With the help of The Clay Foundation, a registered charity, it is run by a team of arts and creative practitioners in partnership with a range of other creative, cultural, educational, business, and community organisations across the city.4 Utilising the success of the BCB 2009, the local arts and culture community has been able to attract funding from a series of national and European government-funded bodies and philanthropic charitable organisations (including Art Council , the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, the Tudor Trust, the Foyle Foundation, the City of Stoke-on-Trent Council, the UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, YMCA, BBC Children in Need, Co-op Foundation, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, and The Geoff Herrington Foundation) to support and further expand its activities aimed at making Stoke-on-Trent a more interesting place to live, work, and play through arts and culture events in redundant buildings and spaces. Capitalising on the success of the British Ceramics Biennial, B Arts, a participatory arts company based in North Staffordshire, together with seven other organisations, has consequently run Artcity – a five-year project

4 BCB (2020). ‘British Ceramics Biennial’, https://www.britishceramicsbiennial.com/. Contact Dr. Vlad Mykhnenko (University of Oxford) [email protected] 01865 280767 3 aimed at: i) creating opportunities that could draw artists to live, work and show work in Stoke-on-Trent; ii) providing promising young local artists with a reason to remain in the Potteries; and iii) helping create a new positive narrative for Stoke- on-Trent, built on its cultural life and creative past, present and future. Developed with the support of Arts Council England, AirSpace Gallery, B Arts, Bitjam, Cultural Sisters, Letting in the Light, PiCL, and Restoke, Artcity has been successful in bringing life back to Stoke-on-Trent’s disused industrial spaces with artistic events and exhibitions. The programme has also opened up ‘meanwhile’, Etruria Canals Festival is the area’s largest celebration of canals and canal abandoned, and non-arts spaces heritage (on the left, see photo © Natalie Willatt for B Arts, 2018). across the Potteries for temporary use by artists.5 ArtCity has enabled artistic activity and reuse of various redundant spaces, including gardens, canals, and empty shops, in an effort to encourage arts graduate retention and urban renewal. Noticeably, during its duration in 2014-2019, the programme faced a major challenge in delivering the long-term objective to increase arts graduate retention. The time of great fiscal austerity, which followed in the UK the global financial crisis of 2007-08, has been characterised by a steady decline in the overall number of students choosing higher education, in general, across the Potteries conurbation. Over the last five years (for which the data are available), the absolute number of undergraduate students from Stoke-on-Trent entering higher education decreased by 18%, from 6,772 (2010-11) to 5,562 (2015-16). Moreover, the number of undergraduates remaining to study at home, in the two local universities , decreased by 33%, from 2,960 in 2010-11 to 1,994 in 2015-16. By striking contrast, during Artcity, the share of local creative arts and design undergraduates (domiciled in Stoke-on- Trent and Newcastle-under-Lyme), who chose to study locally at Staffordshire and Keele Universities, increased from 36.5% in 2013-14 to 37.8% in 2015-16. ‘Arts, entertainment, and recreation’, as a whole, have become the fourth most popular graduate employment sector in the city, following healthcare, education, and retail. The number of successful local grant applications to Arts Council England has more than doubled, from 8 in 2013-14 to 20 in 2016- 17, with the total grant capture increasing during this period from £234,238 to £487,304. The number of new and existing arts companies registered in Stoke-on-Trent with the Companies House has also been rapidly growing, from 4 in 2013-14 to 22 in 2016-17. Local arts company turnover data have also reported the rapid rise in total turnover from £4,541,714 in 2013-14 to £8,309,371 in 2015-16.

EFFECTIVELY REPURPOSING INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE: PRACTICAL MECHANISMS To identify the practical mechanisms driving successful repurposing of Spode Works, we have used a distinctive in- house Urban Futures Method designed to facilitate stakeholders’ collective reflection on and learning about this particular smart shrinkage solution, its benefits, and necessary conditions for effective urban regeneration (Lombardi et al, 2012). During a special Urban Futures workshop on 12 March 2019, hosted by B Arts in Stoke, the local actors involved in or influenced by creative arts projects highlighted a dozen of beneficial outcomes for the city and identified specific enabling conditions to improve liveability, as follows: Outcome What are the necessary conditions that make it happen? • Continued support (promotion) from the regional Chamber of Commerce 1. International exposure • Wider tourism infrastructure – hotels, restaurants and cafés, public transport • Digital tourist application

5 Arts Council England (2020). ‘Artcity’, https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/case-studies/making-stoke-trent-home-arts-and-culture. Contact Dr. Vlad Mykhnenko (University of Oxford) [email protected] 01865 280767 4

• Sustained support from the local authority & partners 2. Sustained & regularised activity • Sustained support from the local authority & partners • Capacity to engage and utilise knowledge 3. Knowledge conduit [transfer] • Sustained support from the local authority & partners • Continued support from the regional Chamber of Commerce • Continued support from the regional Chamber of Commerce 4. Marketing the city inside & • A coherent message outside • Wider tourism infrastructure – hotels, restaurants and cafés, public transport • Sustained support from the local authority & partners • ‘Social space’ 5. Social networks • Sustained support from the local authority & partners • Local university & college arts’ courses • Wider tourism infrastructure – hotels, restaurants and cafés, public transport • Sustained support from the local authority & partners 6. Tourism economy • Continued support from the regional Chamber of Commerce • Local university & college arts’ courses • Council support with rents, infrastructure, bus routes and frequency • Being not a traditional city-centre 7. Work for artists (and associated • Funding activities) • Sustained support from the local authority & partners • A wider cultural community 8. Framework – focus for activities • Sustained support from the local authority & partners & partnerships across cultural • A wider cultural community sector 9. Modelling for Spode Works • Local authority commitment to vision for reused / repurposed industrial heritage [showcasing] • Sustained support from the local authority & partners 10. Local authority agenda-setting – • Administrative support from the local authority funding the arts and benefits of • Local authority commitment to vision for reused / repurposed industrial heritage that • Sustained support from the local authority & partners 11. Artisan economy – the creative • Sustained support from the local authority & partners class • Local university & college arts’ courses

RECOMMENDATIONS: LEARNING FROM THE SPODE EXPERIMENT

 Sustained support from partners and tourism infrastructure are needed for the BCB and related Spode Works’ initiatives to improve the international exposure of Stoke-on-Trent North Staffordshire Chamber of Commerce, local authorities, and other partners should continue to support and promote BCB and other events at Spode to ensure they continue as regularised activities. The success of arts, music, exhibition, and other events at Spode Works will depend on good quality tourism infrastructure. To improve the experience of visitors to reused industrial heritage sites, to make such events more enjoyable, good quality hotels and retail options, a range of restaurants and cafés, and efficient public transport have to be in place. The development of digital tourism application should also be considered.  BCB and related events should be used to showcase Spode Works as an impactful reuse of a post-industrial space Arts, culture, music, and entertainment events organised in Spode Works can demonstrate a physical example of how a shrinking industrial city can effectively repurpose a post-industrial space in a way that it becomes an attractive tourism destination. Such a strategy requires a change in the local authority’s perception and a commitment to a new vision for disused industrial spaces, because local authorities are often the landlords.  Interactions during arts, culture, and music events at repurposed industrial heritage sites are a vehicle for knowledge exchange International festivals like the BCB bring different artists and a range of ideas into the city and many ideas are taken out of the city. Regular festival events hosted in reused industrial buildings should integrate and fertilise the new ideas into a solid local knowledge base. For this to work properly, people need the capacity to engage and utilise this circulating specialist knowledge. Further commitment and support is required from the North

Contact Dr. Vlad Mykhnenko (University of Oxford) [email protected] 01865 280767 5

Staffordshire Chamber of Commerce, the local authority, and other stakeholders, in addition to active commercial players.

WOULD THE REPURPOSED SPODE WORKS DELIVER THE SAME BENEFITS WHATEVER THE FUTURE BRINGS? Repurposing the Spode site through the BCB, ArtCity, and other creative arts-driven initiatives offers a strategic solution to urban shrinkage by making Stoke-on-Trent a more attractive and eventful place. This enhances the city’s liveability and adds to its creative and quirky urban identity, augmenting the economic and cultural wealth of the Potteries in the long-run. However, maintaining cultural activities in shrinking cities can be a difficult task that not only requires conducive local conditions but also needs an enabling political economy environment. The latter, however, is typically a very dynamic phenomenon, fluctuating beyond the control by any local actor. Local decision- makers may still able to ensure that their activities and outcomes bring benefits to the city, despite rapid political, economic, and technological changes and transformations. This policy brief offers a method to make culture-led initiatives more resilient to and sustainable in unpredictable future events: during this project, we have tested the likely future performance of each urban regeneration-related ‘smart shrinkage solution-benefit pair’ – that is, actions taken today in the name of sustainable urban development – in a series of possible future scenarios for the year 2060. Four plausible but distinct future scenarios were included into our analysis (Lombardi et. al., 2012: Table 2). A summary of these four global urban future scenarios is as follows:

Contact Dr. Vlad Mykhnenko (University of Oxford) [email protected] 01865 280767 6

The Urban Future Method does not favour any particular scenario. Indeed, for a solution to be determined to be robust and resilient to future change, the necessary conditions to support intended benefits being achieved over time must exist in all scenarios. Drawing on expertise, experience, and knowledge of the local context, we have graded the likely performance of the repurposed Spode Works in the future as follows:

Urban Futures Method applied to repurposing an industrial heritage asset for arts and culture Necessary New Sustainability Policy Reform Market Forces Fortress World Conditions Paradigm Key players and partners Government might have The focus in partnership Shrinking urban areas and Continued are put in permanent strategic, financial, and building is on brownfield sites are usually collaboration to develop regulatory framework for strengthening the city’s located outside the rich support from industrial heritage assets advancing local culture and unique ‘niche’ consumer enclaves on the ‘left behind’ Chamber of as a culture-led space of event industries if the latter market to stimulate and periphery. No external Commerce, the interaction, inclusion, are believed to have a produce external demand funding or outside support local authority, and sharing. In these significant impact on the and on identifying and is available for the poor and other collaborations, the local nation’s economy and valorising local cultural coomunities outside the partners for a authority acts as an wellbeing. Depends on the assets by commercial fortress. Moreover, rich wider enabler and broker local organisers’ capacity to entities. However, the elites seek protection and international rather than an organiser set a shared event plan and capacity of the local security through secrecy exposure right from the start. nurture national-local authority to invest into rather than exposure However, getting partnerships to deliver that such an enterprise may international exposure plan with national support not exist may contradict the long- term sustainability ethos Local arts & culture-led Culture-led knowledge Local arts and cultural Arts and culture-led events knowledge exchange exchange activities have a knowledge resources may provide a unique activities generate new vital role to play in tackling may become attractive opportunity to engage with knowledge to support social divisions and market products (e.g. experiences of deprived evidence-based decisions exclusion. There is explicit helping businesses to communities and to about sustainability national support for innovate, provide new mobilise local innovations Capacity to challenges and the knowledge exchange models of business and knowledge for an urban absorb and potential for the activities across sectors. practice). Attractiveness transformation. However, utilise shrinking city. They also However, committed local depends on how the local demand for such knowledge operate to embed leadership is required to knowledge products are events in poor enclaves is produced during sustainability innovations prioritise and curate the packaged and limited, whilst the arts and culture across other sectors knowledge exchange. disseminated, however. community’s capacity to events at the (providing tools, Success depends on the Creative industries may organise them and to industrial processes, new clear understanding of what struggle to attract start- absorb arts and culture- heritage venue approaches, and skills) each arts & culture event- up private investments related knowledge is generated knowledge for various reasons (e.g., extremely low entails, of its form, of perceived low business partners and their value of their knowledge) contribution, and of technologies, enabling such an exchange

Contact Dr. Vlad Mykhnenko (University of Oxford) [email protected] 01865 280767 7

Localism means building Industrial brownfield areas Conversion of industrial Local communities outside on each city’s distinctive are key sites for strategic brownfields into cultural the fortress find it difficult A local authority strengths and assets. state intervention. venues may have a value to deal with the negative with a vision and Local authorities operate However, significant as place branding. effect of post- sustained as proactive collaborative investment and power However, the project industrialisation and commitment to actors, using direct constraints may exist within may suffer from inter-city peripheralisation. They improving post- participatory democracy the local decision-making. If competition and lack of struggle to achieve their industrial spaces tools to prioritise and the decentralisation of funding. The local aspiration for urban tackle existing barriers to political power is pursued, authority have to keep regeneration for the lack of and practicing sustainability. They the central government abreast of the changing political power and fiscal new ways of engage with other actors would expect local leaders culture demands to capacity. Creative capacity working with to enhance evidence to build on good evidence, sustain the dynamics of and new initiatives are local base and create effective local priorities and align its niche consumer constrained for all available stakeholders actions their strategies with market, adapting to resoruces are devoted to national objectives. different audiences to addressing ever rising social Devolution is not taken as maintain culture-led problems given, though innovation Key: condition highly unlikely to continue in the future condition is at risk in the future condition highly likely to continue in the future

POLICY IMPLICATIONS

 Strengthen and enhance partnerships and collaborative networks Transforming periodical arts and culture activities into permanent local events and organisations with an international recognition depends crucially on how these event promoters set and maintain relations with their existing and future creative arts partners. National, regional, and private sector decision-makers are key as they can provide the necessary resources to sustain such events. Hence, the event organisers have to understand, nurture, and reinforce collaborations with the relevant local, regional, and national actors. In a competitive market context, a shrinking city requires from the local leaders and partners to recognise arts and culture as a lever of local development by providing some upfront start-up investment. This would act as a catalyst for further arts and culture activities and maintain the dynamics of the events market through brokering new conversations and dialogues and developing new programmes. In the context of inter-city completion and power inequalities, a working partnership has to integrate specific measures to strengthen the local leadership and to organise the local community to identify the real potential of its built environment.  Facilitate the production, consumption, and exchange of creative arts and culture knowledge Not only do culture-led activities contribute to economic value, they also serve as a catalyst for innovation through new products and services and for advancement of novel ideas, knowledge, and ways of working. Public support is very important for knowledge production and exchange activities in the creative sector; hence, local and national governments have to provide a mixture of financial and regulatory stimuli. Yet the unique potential for knowledge exchange that creative arts and culture activities possess both within the sector and far beyond, and the distinctive character of such activities need to be fully acknowledged. This requires a more specific set of investment and support methods to ensure arts and culture events hosted in industrial heritage buildings operate as a knowledge conduit and a driver of innovation (e.g., ‘The Paper Peace Poem’ by Robert Montgomery). The focus should be on collaborative development, Contact Dr. Vlad Mykhnenko (University of Oxford) [email protected] 01865 280767 8 sharing, and management of new knowledge to enable the arts and culture participants to think together, to articulate and share information and insights gained, and to codify and co-ordinate the explicit and implicit data generated in the process of an event. To maximise its impact, such a distinctive knowledge-sharing model needs to be supported by umbrella arts and culture ArtCity 2019 Final Conference: How Do Artists Shape A City? organisations through additional funding. In a highly A participant’s take-home message: “Remind people regularly competitive market, arts and culture-led knowledge of → Culture need not to be imported if it is Home Grown” exchange products have to be made attractive for commercial business and other users. A system should be put in place to engage with different audiences, to understand the range of market needs and wants and, consequently, to package and promote creative arts knowledge products to multiple end-users. Arts and culture-led knowledge exchange activities may also be used as facilitators in tackling deprivation, in finding new ways of supporting poor neighbourhoods in shrinking cities. In this way, arts and culture-led events should engage with the otherwise excluded communities by co-producing new knowledge that reflects those communities’ particular circumstances and challenges.  A visionary, innovative and collaborative local authority Shrinking cities are often seen by national governments, especially, finance ministers as unproductive peripheral places needing generous investment and disproportionate policy attention. Yet often, in order to kick-start the regeneration of post-industrial spaces, what really matters is the local leadership that is able 1) to recognise and seize opportunities provided by national policies, and 2) to harness the existing local resources, industrial legacies, and heritage assets. Local authority leaders have to demonstrate how the conversion of a post-industrial space for arts and culture would unlock local growth and innovation. This strategy should explicate how it responds to both local challenges and national priorities, and be honest about the existing barriers, levers, and mechanisms, which the local authority can muster to deliver the agenda. Whilst lobbying the national government for reasonable support, local authority leaders should experiment in finding new governance and funding models for delivering their vision, actively engaging with a variety of cross-sector partners. Confronting the inevitable marginalisation and peripheralisation of shrinking cities requires a strong local leadership team. A visionary and committed local government can take initiative, engage, inspire, provide material conditions for, and curate the formation of internal and external collaborations, which are vital for mobilising local strengths and resources, promoting growth, wellbeing, and social inclusion. REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING • Ault R (2019, January 19). How Spode has been brought back to life – 10 years after the factory closed. The Sentinel (Stoke-on-Trent), https://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/news/stoke-on-trent-news/how-spode-been- brought-back-2394037 • Bontje M & Musterd S (2009). Creative industries, creative class and competitiveness: Expert opinions critically appraised. Geoforum, 40(5): 843-852, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2009.07.001 • Florida R L (2002). The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books. • Florida R L (2008). Who's Your City? How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life. New York: Basic Books. • Hall P (2000). Creative cities and economic development. Urban Studies, 37(4): 639-649, https://doi.org/10.1080/00420980050003946 • Heeney G (ed.) (2017). The Post-Industrial Landscape as Site for Creative Practice: Material Memory. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. • Landry C (2000). The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators. London: Earthscan. • Lombardi DR, Leach JM & Rogers CDF et al (2012). Designing Resilient Cities: A Guide to Good Practice. Bracknell, UK: IHS BRE Press.

CITE AS: Mykhnenko, Vlad & Badyina, Anna (2020). 3S RECIPE – Smart Shrinkage Solutions: Stoke-on-Trent (UK) Policy Brief #4. Liveability. University of Oxford. Zenodo. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3942160.

Contact Dr. Vlad Mykhnenko (University of Oxford) [email protected] 01865 280767